On this threefold foundation of scriptural authority, direct spiritual insight, and the right of the human intellect to work out its own conclusions, the German Reformation built up its defense against the institutionalism of the mediaeval church system. Its central doctrine, the Justification by Faith, was the expression, crude though it might be, of that harmony between the righteous soul and the order of a divinely governed universe, which had ever been the truest ideal of Christian thought. Its emphasis on the idea of individual sinfulness, exaggerated as it may now seem, was the necessary counterpoise to the equally exagger ated laxness in the existing methods of dealing with this never-ending problem. The outward success of the German Reformation was largely due to the skill with which its leaders, notably Luther (q.v.), succeeded in avoiding the logical extremes of doctrine into which a radical wing under the lead of Thomas Miinzer (q.v.) and others sought to force them and also to the clear insight which led them from the first to identify their cause with that of the independ ent territorial princes. By this eminently con servative and constructive policy they were able to give to their work a distinctively na tional character, to ensure it against attack from without and 'thus to make it the starting point for still further advance.
Under the protection and hence to a certain extent under the direction of the several gov ernments Lutheranism acquired during the 16th and 17th centuries a rigidity of form and of doctrine apparently no less dangerous to the free movement of human thought than the system it had supplanted. The doctrine of scriptural authority endangered by an inevitable freedom of interpretation was pushed by one wing to an extreme of literalism which could end only in self-destruction. The doctrine of the ((enslaved will,)) strengthened by the re action of Calvinistic predestination, was in danger of hardening into an unchristian fatal ism. From these dangers Germany was saved by the growth, first, of a healthy, humane spirit, such as had always served to modify the severity of Luther's theology, and second, of a new philosophy or method of thought, which gave an ever-widening scope to the exercise of plain human reason. Luther himself had in deed laid the foundations deeper and broader than he knew when he had declared that he could be convinced of error only by "Scripture and plain reason? If these two were to have equal rights in determining religious truth it must follow of itself that reason should be applied to the interpretation of Scripture.
This is the special service of Germany in the field of modern religious thought: to have given to the accepted doctrine of Christianity a form that might make it acceptable to the modern world. The key-note is sounded in the writings of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (q.v.), and this the more dearly because Lessing had no formal system of philosophy to offer, but approached this subject as he did all others from the point of view of the free human spirit working on the divine mysteries in virtue of a divine element within itself. Especially he de manded in religious matters the widest possible use of the critical method, the freest investiga tion into the original sources, in short, the treat ment of the Bible as a collection of literature produced by human means and therefore sub ject to the same rules of criticism as all other human productions. In so far Lessing stood
on the same ground as the English Deists of the previous century and their French followers, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists; but Germany was not ready at once to give up its adherence to formal Christianity. As it had escaped the frivolity of the Renaissance, so it sought to avert the frivolity of "enlightenment? It de manded a principle of thought by which it could reconcile the right of the thinking mind with what seemed to be the essential things in the inherited religious system.
This solution is the special contribution of Immanuel Kant (q.v.) (d. 1804). Others had struggled to find an expression for the idea that our reason may accept anything that is not above it, provided only it be not called upon to accept anything that is contrary to it. Kant analyzed the nature of Reason itself and found a distinction between pure reason which could never penetrate into the supernatural and a "practical') reason to which the absolute moral law is revealed. Through this principle it be came possible to give new interpretations to the formal doctrines of Christianity. The intense emphasis thus laid upon the thinking individual as the final authority could not fail, however, to produce in Germany, even among most seri ous thinkers a growing indifference to the formulae of faith and to the institutions that had come to represent them. Out of this com parative indifference to formal dogmas grew the two directions of religious life and thought which have specially characterized Germany to the present day. Pietism (q.v.), the emphasis upon an overstrict personal morality as the only real condition of religious had al ready found its chief expression at the Uni versity of Halle under the teaching of Spener (q.v.) (d. 1705), and Francke (q.v.) (d. 1727). It was modified by the new philo sophic Impulse, but it had sunk too deep into the character of the German people to be easily removed. On the other hand Rationalism, the right of the human reason to be heard in every determination of religions truth and in every institution of the religious life, was greatly strengthened by the Kantian reconciliation.
Both these directions of thought, Pietism and Naturalism (q.v.), go back in the last analysis to the same principle of the individual as the unit of religious experience and the ultimate authority in matters of faith. German religions thought in the 19th century tried to keep its hold on both these aspects of indi vidualism. In various organizations, notably in the Evangelical Union and the Protestant enverein it sought to embody the practical demands for a reformed faith that should not give up thepersonal and social foundations of the early Reformation. In the successive schools of theological interpretation, the of Schleiermacher and Neander (qq.v.), the ((historical') school of Tubingen (q.v.), and mediatorial school of Ritschl (q.v.), Germany has aimed to keep the balance be tween the extravagance of modern materialism and a relapse into an .official literalism. The problem of the moment in Germany as else where is to bring back a sentiment of religious obligation without sacrificing the gains of modern exact science.